Better living through empiricism

China

October 04, 2014

We are likely now approaching the end-game of this round of protests in Hong Kong. The latest news involved attacks by thugs on the protestors, which should be highly reminiscent for those that followed the protests in Tahrir Square. As Daniel Davies then vulgarly summarized: "When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you. And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijs are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, a#$%*@s." Obviously, the larger point about the military not having the numbers does not apply to Hong Kong, but as colleague John Schaus notes, the PRC, sensibly, knows that sending in the PLA will be costly and so they prefer other means.

Dan Levin of the New York Times gives a fascinating history on the triads that are the foot soldiers in the attacks. "According to Sharon Kwok and T. Wing Lo, experts on the city’s criminal underworld at City University of Hong Kong, the triads were originally a patriotic organization founded in the 17th century to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. They eventually contributed to the 1911 revolution, which saw the last emperor replaced by the Republic of China. Patriotism soon fell by the wayside, however." The triads worked with occupying Japanese forces and In 1993, just four years before Britain returned Hong Kong to Beijing’s control, China’s then-minister of public security, Tao Siju, said at a news conference that China was willing to work with triads if they were “patriotic and concerned with the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.”

The People's Republic of China also sometimes has allies against democracy that wear far nicer suits. Back in July the big local branches of the four accounting firms took out an ad against Occupy Central (via Henry of Crooked Timber):

The big four global accounting companies have taken out press advertisements in Hong Kong stating they are “opposed” to the territory’s democracy movement, warning that their multinational clients may quit the city if activists carry out threats to disrupt business with street protests. In an unusual joint statement published in three Chinese-language newspapers on Friday, the Hong Kong entities of EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC said the Occupy Central movement, which is calling for electoral reform in the former British colony, posed a threat to the territory’s rule of law.

By Monday, another advert appeared in Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper, purportedly placed by employees of the Big Four, which admonished the firms’ bosses. In white characters against a black background, the employees wrote: “hey boss, your statement doesn’t represent us”—a double entendre in Cantonese, as “hey boss” is also a mild vulgarity expressing angered disbelief.

Instead, for those seeking civil society approaches, I'd say focus on the long game and let U.S. and multinational companies know that collaboration in antidemocratic efforts, in China or elsewhere, will cause them problems in their other markets. As Henry notes:

Of course, this isn’t the first shameful decision made by Western companies looking to build business in China – see Bloomberg’s squashing of a story on corruption among family members of senior Chinese leaders, or, for that matter, Rupert Murdoch’s instruction to Harper-Collins not to publish Chris Patten’s memoirs. But this goes substantially further than quiet acquiescence, to public and active opposition to the pro-democracy movement, and the issuing of threats intended to stifle it. It would be nice to see Ernst-Young, KPMG, Deloitte and Price-Waterhouse Cooper put on the spot by US politicians and journalists about their Hong Kong offices’ unrepudiated public statements opposing pro-democracy protestors.

This was a particularly big deal for technology companies in the aughts. The price they pay for not playing ball with the PRC can be rather large, as recently demonstrated by censorship this summer. I have no problem believing that the ad in the Apple was taken out by employees of the accounting firms and that there are people at most multinational firms active in China that would prefer a first do no harm approach. Pressure from the outside, between crises, can strengthen their hands.

This is very exciting -- as the New York Times' Erik Eckholm observes, "In a sharp break with Chinese Communist tradition, even for dismissed officials, Mr. Zhao provides personal details of tense party sessions." In other words, there's some good dirt here for China scholars.

May 06, 2009

After the initial euphoria of Sen. Specter’s switch, his votes and comments were both rather disappointing. Specifically he voted no on the budget bill, spoke out against a public option for universal healthcare, said he wouldn’t change his vote on the unionizing bill, and generally indicated that he wouldn’t be a loyal Democrat.

I can’t help but thinking that’s related to the Paul Kane’s news that Specter just got stripped of Seniority and thus plum committee assignments on the Democratic side. He’ll get his back post 2010 election, assuming he’s still in the Senate. On the whole, this makes him more vulnerable to a primary challenge and should increase his incentives to move to the left.

March 02, 2009

I'm pulling my entry on Chait's op-ed as I learned that my quick wikipedia search based assumptions about a lack of relationship were mistaken. Obviously. politics isn't a game. There's always real people involved and I try to remember that in posts. However, I'm not comfortable talking about anyone I have any level of professional ties with without talking to them first. So I'm relaying my apology and pending a response will either keep this post down or restore it with the relationship properly noted.

They cover a range of issues, not just the old positive versus negative freedoms but our treatment of prisoners, our actions in Iraq, etc. Everything in the article seemed like a fair point. I'm not sure about that arm sales number, but I think that might be a typo in the article. However, we have nothing to fear from such attack. There's nothing that's said in the criticism that isn't shouted from the rooftops tops in the U.S.

Whenever China throws out such critiques, we should use the opportunity to engage in honest dialogue. Our case is strengthened by admitting that we aren't perfect. We can invite Chinese officials to tour our prisons, attend some of our discussions on improving treatment of prisoners, etc.

The U.S. government always says we want to engage in a human rights dialogue; we should put that description into action and treat this as a legitimate Chinese response.

December 11, 2008

Matthew Yglesias: The Cucumber Factor: Ta-Nehisi Coates is getting ready to foreswear the smear against white people that we eat cucumber. And yet just yesterday here in Finland where the white people are twice as white as back home (Nordic ancestry + subarctic winter = pale), I was in fact served a sandwich of cucumbers and cheese on a croissant.

And here in Vienna while seated next to Dani Rodrik I was just served not a cucumber sandwich but an egg salad sandwich on white bread with the crusts removed.

When I caught an intra-China flight, I got a meal of a ham sandwich on white bread, crusts removed, with mayo. It really felt like they were aiming for American or European cuisine but went so far over the top that they produced something entirely new.

When I went to an event with Jennifer 8 Lee on her book the Fortune Cookie chronicles, I mentioned this particular story. She said that she loved those sandwiches, although while they weren’t horrible I don’t really see the appeal. I then suggested that it would be only fair if they were called “General Washington’s Sandwich” or something like that.

Picture of a similar sandwich by ulterior epicure used under a creative commons license.

August 04, 2008

So as the security Olympics approach, it’s quite clear that China hasn’t kept any of its promises to the International Olympics Committee and in fact is cracking down harder than usual. This isn’t particularly unexpected, there have been cases where concessions have been won from the Chinese, typically the release of political prisoners, but lately we seem to be having trouble even getting that.

I don’t believe the problem is that it’s impossible to get improvements; however, I do believe that it is an area where the Chinese government can be counted on to bargain hard and backslide whenever they can. An obvious answer is to play hardball back. However, in many cases that’s likely to antagonize the nationalism of the Chinese people. The way we pick these battles, our criticism often come at times when they don’t have much support in China proper.

I think an effective agenda pushing for slow reform in China would have to pick its battles and tactics much more effectively. That said, it’s simply a difficult agenda, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile, but there’s more areas for leverage when it comes to trade, the environment, etc.

August 02, 2008

Back when I did my thesis, I read about a half-dozen or so protests that were started by traffic accidents. Typically these were clashes where the people on the street, as it were, didn’t feel the accident was justly resolved for example a hit and run or police protecting some powerful person.

August 01, 2008

The fiancee found this great article in the Sun on the changes in Beijing that matches up with what I’ve heard and some of what I saw on my trip.

But what of the old Beijing?

Historic neighborhoods along ancient roads,called hutongs, once stretched from Tiananmen Square more than a mile in every direction. Tiny dwellings with shared courtyards and a labyrinth of narrow alleyways kept neighborhoods tight-knit. With family-owned businesses filling out the communal patchwork, the centuries-old design, distinct to Beijing, was a testament to functionality, if nothing else.

Now 70 percent of the hutongs that existed only 50 years ago are gone.

According to the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, 1.5 million Beijing residents have been displaced in preparation for the Olympics. Only 2,700 were displaced in Athens, host of the Summer Games four years ago, according to the same report. An average of 60,000 Beijing homes per year has been demolished since 2006.

They definitely are a part of the historic character of Beijing, but those in higher value areas, especially this one near Tiananmen Square can easily be replaced by developments of much greater value. This gentrification forces people to the edge of the city, which may well be inevitable, but they also tend to get a raw deal monetarily which is basically the default case in a wide variety of Chinese land development sitautions.

Aside from property rights and over civil law protections, there’s a major urban design problem here. China often intentionally copies changes in the West and is picking up many of our mistakes. Notably the move to groups of blocks contained by large roads, car oriented development, and rejecting the merits of classic courtyard designs even if hutongs themselves don’t scale. (This was really brought home to me by a presentation at the National Building Museum, but I don’t have the speaker’s info handy). Fortunately the city is also built three new subway lines for the Olympics, so there is good news as well. The actual Olympic village and supporting developments do seem like smart growth, although whether they pull off their goals seems like it will depend a lot on post-Olympic implementation.

The teacher who fled first, Fan Meizhong, was given the nickname "Runner Fan" which became famous all over the Internet. Everybody is aware of how much he has been cursed out on the Internet. But when he made an appearance on a Phoenix TV program, a friend asked on his behalf, "Is it wrong to be frank?" and suddenly he got the sympathy of certain members of the public. Then the Ministry of Education tried to please the public by rescinding Fan Meizhong’s teaching license. As a result, Fan Meizhong got even more public support because his freedom of speech was violated. This simple Internet incident had many twists and turns, and became a public debate over social values.

A couple choice quotes from the man himself:

When his pupils began to arrive, they asked: "Teacher, why didn’t you bring us out?"

His explanation was simple. "I have a very strong sense of self-preservation," he said. "I have never been a brave man and I’m only really concerned about myself."

...

Zilu Houren 2008-5-22 12:16:16 -- For your own sake and for the sake of others, please change jobs. You are not suitable to be a teacher.

Fan Meizhong 2008-5-22 12:20:46 -- Zilu Houren, you are obviously a brave person. The historical Zilu was beaten into a pulp for his bravery. So why haven’t you become a martyr yet with your own bravery. I think you should kill yourself.

...

Fan Meizhong: 2008 5-22 12:29:14 -- I ought to sacrifice my life so that you can be moved to tears.

I don’t actually have a real point here, I just find this interesting. I’m curious how this story would have gone down differently in America. From what I’ve read, the Chinese internet community is a bit more willing to turn into a lynch mob, sometimes literally, but at the same time there’s more skepticism about calls for self-sacrifice. The government has a long cynical history of demanding terrible sacrifices from their people and some of the more recent campaigns haven’t been so successful.

June 28, 2008

Eating lunch in a working man's restaurant in Hong Kong I hear mostly
Cantonese but with occassional English words, "passion," for example.
Borrowed words or loanwords
surely tell us something important about ideas or concepts that the
first language lacks. Most loanwords are for things (e.g. mouse for a
computer device), it's pretty easy to explain the adoption of such
words. But what about words for which the thing has always existed but
not the word? Chinese speakers tell me that there is a word for love
but passion is more difficult to translate.

Interesting, that wouldn't have been something I'd have guessed from contemporary Chinese history. Revolutions are full of passion after all. Tabarrok goes on to raise some interesting questions and link to a list of difficult to translate words.

May 23, 2008

On the balance, the Chinese government’s response to the earthquake has been quite open and effective considering the circumstances. There may be one large exception, if you’ve been following the news you may have heard a lot of stories about schools collapsing. As a Post article by Ariana Eunjung Cha shows, that isn’t just a matter of sensationalism, it appears that schools were harder hit than other buildings.

It would not surprise me in the least if local governments consistently used shoddy or cut rate materials for school construction. That said, I’m not sure why they’d build teacher’s dorms to be any higher quality, perhaps the schools had to be expanded recently and are newer.

Regardless, the central-local divide is a critical dynamic for understanding China. Outside of religious/ethnic/foreign policy issues, most complaints Chinese have with their government involves misdeeds by local officials. While authoritarian, in some sense the central government is accountable to the people for its performance. Communist ideology is no longer a major factor, nationalism does play in but that’s also tied to performance, and the military/police are a critical backstop but haven’t been necessary in full force since Tiananmen.

However, as I read it, the local governments are primarily accountability to the central government and not their people. Village elections do exist, but not above the village level. Local officials do rely on business contacts or even their own businesses for both official resources and corruption, but that is a limited constiuency. They’re primarily judged by blunt performance metrics from the central government that will determine their long term success in the Communist party. These metrics often do not fully line up with official policy. Environmental considerations and labor rights often feature prominently in central rules, but unalloyed economic growth as well as stability are what really get measured.

Thus the relationship of the central government to the local ones is complicated. If the local governments systematically built shabby schools, the central government may punish those officials responsible. However, unless a major outcry occurs the government would just as soon ignore any cases that are not exceptionally egregious or committed by cadres lacking in connections. If a broad enough outcry occurs action may well be taken against local officials, but those who lead the outcry will likely also be punished.

May 12, 2008

Sounds like a real tragedy with the dead around 8500 at latest count. China’s had a run of incidents lately, the most recent major one were blizzards during a major travel season that threw the train system into chaos. According to Jill Drew’s reporting, the government’s sent 5000 troops to help with recovery which is probably a good response.

James Fallows, reporting from Beijing, has coverage of what’s been said by the Chinese media. Many channels are apparently not covering it, but CCTV is emphasizing how major officials are responding: "Background: after the country was paralyzed by unexpected snow storms in February, the leadership was criticized for a Katrina-like slowness in dealing with the problem. Prominent coverage now of the main officials responding immediately to this disaster."

Coverage from Taiwan and other Asian television stations have footage from Chengdu but CCTV has been slower to incorporate it.

Fallows gives some background on the area. I didn’t get their during my trip, closest I came was Chongqing which is in a neighboring province downriver. I think there’s actually a mistake in the Post article, based on the map the Three Gorges Dam isn’t in Sichuan:

- To help place this disaster: it is in almost exactly the same area I described in this article about the Wolong Panda Reserve, northwest of Chengdu, and this slide show about the reserve. A long, twisty road from Chengdu to Wolong, which had been undergoing years of reconstruction, passes right through the earthquake area. I assume it could be a long time before it is restored to even its perilous previous condition.

Hopefully the immediate visit by the Premier and the troops mean the government is going to have a successful disaster response. Local governments in China often botch these things, but it sounds like the resources of the central state are being brought in.

April 29, 2008

I’ve been meaning to update my blogroll for a while and it seems like now is a good place to start. My latest add is James Fallows over at the Atlantic. He’s a journalist presently living in Beijing and does great coverage of China. The man is also quite tech savvy and it sounds like we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

We all pick our causes. During my brief and enjoyable stint at Microsoft long ago, I worked on various big-think projects. But my claim to have changed the world may rest on my all-out war against "Clippy," the moronic "help" feature that popped up to say "Hey, you seem to be writing a letter!" each time you typed "Dear ..." I don’t want to overstate things, but before I arrived, Word came with Clippy turned on by default. Now it’s turned off by default. Judge for yourself.

His current quest is to get people to stop using the "boiled frog" analogy. Turn up the heat fast, frog jumps out, slow, frog stays in and boils. Apparently it isn’t true. I’m not going to fully join that crusade, but I will make sure I don’t use that particular parable.

April 16, 2008

Ariana Eunjung Cha wrote up the impact of the new labor in China a couple days back in the post. Is it a good law? Well the title is "New Law Gives Chinese Workers Power, Gives Businesses Nightmares" which, given the present situation in China, basically means unalloyed good thing.

Wei Hoqiang used to work in a toy factory that forced him to sign a contract it did not let him read. It paid him 30 cents an hour, made him work 100 days without a day off, and kept him in a room that wasice cold in winter and suffocating in summer. He said he knew he was being taken advantage of, but he was so afraid of his boss’s ire that he stayed for two years...

Armed with a landmark new labor contract law that went into effect Jan. 1, employees like Wei are turning the tables on employers in China.

The law -- designed to combat forced labor, withholding of pay, unwarranted dismissals and other abuses -- represents a major victory for Chinese workers who for decades have complained of companies that would stop at nothing to wring out profits. It has prompted legions of workers in recent months to become bolder about quitting and about staging strikes to demand improvements in work conditions and wages...

It has added to the rising cost of doing business in China -- contributing to an exodus of what is estimated to be thousands of factories from places like the Pearl River Delta in southern China, for 20 years synonymous with cheap and abundant labor and the engine behind China’s rapid growth...

Not all of these companies are leaving the country, however. Many say they are moving to less developed parts of China that offer tax breaks and other incentives to offset the increasing costs associated with the new labor law.

Well worth reading the whole thing. Anyways, while the article does compare the worker-business trade-offs I think it makes quite clear that in the places where it’s really coming into force, the situation is still roughly full employment. That isn’t a coincidence, you can probably bet that in the less developed parts of China mentioned above, one of the incentives will be spotty enforcement of the law. The PRC may have a strong central government, but it has fairly weak regulatory regimes and lots of corruption.

Anyways, from the sound of it, the sketchy businesses are finding new people to exploit and the prosperous regions are maturing into economies with more legal safeguards. This will probably be a good thing for everyone involved, the less developed areas will probably initially welcome some of those sketchy jobs.

There probably won’t be that many implications for U.S. companies operating in China. From what I’ve heard, we already tend to be at the top end of employers. What are the implications for U.S. importers? Harder to say, there’s a lot of poor Chinese people out there, although businesses operating in the interior will probably have to rely on less developed infrastructure.

March 17, 2008

The New York Times reporter will be in town discussing and signing "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles," an exploration of the history of American Chinese food and why we can’t get enough of it. What has us really excited is the promise of a reception with Chinese food. And since it’s at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, it’s kosher, of course.

There’s also two DC art shows I think I’ll catch. Nancy Wolf has one on with modern art on Chinese megalopolises in a gallery near Dupont Circle. The Japan Information and Cultural Center has wood prints by Shigeru Mizuki with "serene village-scapes are populated with yokai -- the goofy goblins, one-eyed boys and mischievous little spirits that are derived from the country’s folklore."

Probably won’t blog about them, art blogging is tricky, but if any friends want to make one of the shows let me know in comments or by email.

What really caught my attention was the pictures in the article. I don’t see a link in the online version of the article, but here’s a pretty thorough run down from the museum. My favorite from the Post was a different angle of the 99 wolves in a pack with the lead throwing themselves against a glass pain (under selected works->installations). That said, the selected works Explosion Event first slide felt a bit startling in a bad way, although but perhaps that’s the intent.

December 21, 2007

The main point is: in one sprawling area are many hundreds of individual art factories, in which teams of artists crank out hand-painted replicas of any sort of picture you can imagine. European old masters. Andy Warhol. Gustav Klimt. Classic Chinese landscapes. Manet. Audubon. Botero. The super-hot and faddish contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun, whose paintings and sculptures all feature people wearing enormous grins. Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light." Walter Keane, the "Painter of Mawkish Big-Eyed Kids."

This and more is on sale, priced more or less by the square meter. We saw suppliers delivering huge rolls of canvas, to be converted into "commodity art" -- which is what the English sign on one store said.

We weren’t in Shenzhen long, so we definitely miss Dafen, the art factory village he’s talking about. The phenomenon isn’t quite so pronounced in art districts in the big city, although I do recall some shops that were similarly loaded with paintings.

Instead the main thing I remember are fake art students. My guidebook regularly warned me against them. They hung out at major tourist spots, including within the Forbidden City and told me about this art show that featured some of their work. Essentially they were just hawkers with more than average English skill. They’d lead you to an overpriced shop. I never hit one myself, but I was rather surprised to see an "art exhibit" was in the Forbidden City itself. I guess it was rented out just like the other museum shops.

Back when I was studying this issue, I read about a few PLA pensioner protests in Beijing. Those tended to be big news and were handled fairly delicately as the authorities realized the precariousness of their position. This isn’t to say that promised concessions ever came through, but when the pensioners resisted crackdowns the government often backed off a bit.

Anyhow, while in China, I noticed a fair number of gents wearing camouflage jackets. I wasn’t sure at the time if it was just a popular look or they were former PLA. Based on this article, it sounds like they may well have been former soldiers that were demobalized.

December 03, 2007

The trip home was fairly uneventful. As much as I enjoy looking out the window while flying I may give up and start doing more aisle seats. It’s nice to be able to stand up and walk around on a long flight and I won’t always have an exit row. That said, there were some interesting views on the way back. Alaska was quite pretty and I did the equivalent of cloud spotting on the terrain below.

In one amusing coincidence, there was a former cabinet official and top board member of the think tank that employees me on the plane. I knew his aide and so said hi to him and got introduced in turn to the dignitary who was quite nice. The Dulles shuttle and customs are really the great equalizer.

I had one mandarin orange with me when I got off the flight. They don’t actually give you anywhere to dispose of them once you leave. I was expecting at least one area to dump items you don’t want to take through customs, but apparently we don’t do that in the U.S. any more. I was a bit worried as one of the customs guys told me I’d have to take it to agriculture.

However, when I reported it I was thanked for being honest and just given a card that said I needed to see agriculture. I swung by agriculture, dropped off the orange, and was on my way, only thirty seconds the worse for wear. For the record, I was planning to rage against the paranoid security measures, I’m happy to have been wrong in this case. Then I met up with my parents and my soon to be fiancee and got the heck out of Dulles.

December 01, 2007

The Summer Palace continued to inspire for the second half of my visit. We were short on time so I missed the Naval contracting debacle that was the Marble boat and instead Rick and I headed up the Temple of Buddhist Incense which you see behind you (note that translations of Summer Palace sites are highly inconsistent).

The walk up to the Temple was a lot of fun and gave me a chance to get a close look at some of the roofwork. The view from the base of the temple was quite satisfying, much like the hill next to the forbidden temple it gave a great view of all the elegant nearby buildings. Interestingly, the Empress Dowager and the Empress had separate courts. The Emperor was effectively under house arrest in his, although in fairness to the Empress hers didn’t seem any nicer.

Our final stop on the way out was this neat market bisected by a canal. There were drawbridges on both sides and all the works in it had traditional garb on. I didn’t buy much at all but it was quite fun. Particularly because Rick haggled hard, walked away, and then ultimately the merchant gave in to a final bit of negotiation from opposite sides of the canal!

Took an unmarked taxi back and despite attempts to offer overly high prices back we got the same rate that we got over. After a subway trip back I hit the post office and then got a taxi out to the airport. The drive wasn’t that bad although apparently it can get really backed up by traffic. Beijing Airport was on the whole rather nice and friendly, United even upgrade me to an exit row. Sadly there were no outlets and no places to mail postcards once you got past security. I bought some Olympic mascots from a merchant that promised to drop the last few postcards in the mail. Obnoxiously we had our liquids taken from us, again, when boarding the plane. So I lost the iced chrysanthemum tea I bought after getting past security. Not cool!

November 30, 2007

For my last day I didn’t need to leave for the airport until about 3 pm and so I decided to take a trip to the Summer Palace. The original palace was destroyed by the 8 Allied Powers and my guide book recommended against it as mostly being a nationalistic complaint. That said, it did get a picture in the Baltimore Sun that made it look like an interesting ruin, so maybe I’ll stop by next time.

The intact palace was built back in 1750 but was most strongly associated with the later Empress Dowager Cixi and is a sprawling park with a range of temples, courtyards, and gardens. To a greater extent than at the Forbidden Palace, many of the buildings have been converted into antiquities museums. Sadly most of the indoor museums didn’t allow pictures, but that’s no different than the West. This is my kind of palace really. I like big castles and fortresses well enough, but when it comes to Palaces I prefer them broken up and generally park-like.

The picture above is from the Garden of Harmonious Interests which was quite delightful. There were actually a few different choirs, amateur I'd think, that were performing in the various stages, a phenomenon I saw elsewhere in the Summer Palace and back in Xi'an. They didn't always live up to the name of the garden. After leaving the Garden we swung by the a stage/palace area which had live shows. After that, wandering by yet more pretty buildings, we came to a museum with a neat range of historical artifacts. Not quite up to Shanxii Provincial museum standards but none too shabby.

We'd actually bought the fully inclusive ticket in advance, I think it was a good deal if you have the time, all the special locations were worth it. I'm not sure I can say the same of my 2 yuan Corn popsicle, it was unique but that's about all I could say for it. Also, on a tourist advisory note, use bathrooms whenever you can, they're hard to find.

November 26, 2007

After getting back from the Great Wall I did some money withdrawing and shopping before we headed off that evening to get Peking Duck. The restaurant was in a hutong, which is a neighborhood with one story buildings and small windy streets. They used to be quite common in Beijing but are steadily being replaced with denser developments. They also don’t tend to have many amenities, so restrooms are often outside of the houses and communal. The PRC’s concept of eminent domain doesn’t have nearly as many protections as in the West, so not surprisingly all the bad things that can happen when your neighborhood gets razed are a bit more common here.

The Peking Duck place was actually quite class even so. I’d never had it properly before. Apparently the routine is to get a crepe, put soy sauce on it via a cucumber slice, get a slice of duck, and then roll them all up and eat the crepe like a mini-burrito. All of this should be done with chopsticks to really do it right. Took a little effort but I could pull it off. The dinner was quite tasty and an excellent note to end the official part of the trip on.

Afterwards Rick and I went to take one last look at Tiananmen Square at night. Unfortunately, while it was just a ten minute walk away the group took a bit too much time touring the hutong the restaurant was located in, so the lights were already out. The square proper was actually fenced off and had the occasional patrolling guard, which is apparently not standard practice. After taking the subway back, I hung out a bit with my fellow travelers and slept my last night in China for this trip.

I actually didn't bother with a lot of the English mistakes. They're
still quite common but in an era of LOLcats I'm not sure they're still
all that funny in their own right. I considered Article 11 to be an
exception. This was from the area near the big Goose Pagoda which was
highly touristy but interesting.

[Note: This may be a repost. I originally published it as a page and not a post, so I'm not sure if anyone actually saw it (nor am I sure what the difference is).]

The total distance we walked was just 7-9 km but we took our time looking at the scenery and there were a lot of rough bits, so it took about three hours. There was actual a variety of sources of difficulty that made the wall trek fun:

Rough bits where the stairs had devolved into basically broken rock or might not have been properly carved in the first place.

Smooth bits where the whole top of the wall was sheered off. The walk was still rough enough to give some traction, but there weren’t really fortifications on the side to use for support.

Parts where the wall has given way (typically at former gates or such where there was only an arch and not the full wall base) that you had to traverse by going on a trail.

Anyways, I fairly stupidly did all my planned purchasing from our "helper" in the first half of the trip. This left me in a bit of a foul mood regarding the "helper" in the second half who regularly pointed out what great friends we were and how I could buy a book later. (I ended up buying a bit less than a book, but still). However, the trip was still far too fun for even that to really throw me. Katie showed more wit and wisdom than I did and actually managed to shake off her people for the whole second half.

The final exit was neat. There’s a gorge with a small river that you can pay 10 yuan to cross by a hanging bridge. After that there’s an easy and well-maintained walk down an artificial bit of wall to the tourist trap entrance/exit. We had lunch there and took our group shot. Traversing the wall was actually a fairly expensive journey (40 yuan at the start, 40 yuan for the second half, 10 yuan for the bridge (so $15 or so total) plus stuff I bought). However, it was well worth it particularly because the hike was fun in its own right even before considering the unbeatable views. That said, my favorite of the trip bit was probably still the bike-ride through karst country since that got me more of a feel for modern China.

November 25, 2007

I’ve thrown one up on Google Web Albums. It’s about 230 so about 20 minutes at 5 seconds a picture. I think I may later throw in a few slides to establish location, but I haven’t found a good tool for that yet and am a bit too busy to make them by hand.

November 21, 2007

We had quite a journey to the Great Wall. We got up early in the morning, piled into a bus, and rode for around two and a half hours. The point was to get an entry area that would be largely devoid of tourists and it did indeed pay off. There was a bit of a climb to get to even one of the lower points of the wall.

On the way up, we were accompanied by a batch of merchants with a new skill: unrequested assistance in exchange for guilt. Some of our more experienced travelers were able to shake off the help, I wasn’t quite so strong and occasionally didn’t actively refuse assistance and felt obliged to buy a few things. Ultimately, it would have been a better experience had I just said no solidly at the start and stuck by it. Our ’guides’ had some useful information and did make things easier, but I enjoy rock scrambling. Fortunately I did have the willpower to do many bits on my own often having to shake off a helping hand.

The Wall is nothing short of amazing. It’s hard to really grasp the sheer scale of the thing. The great satisfaction of the Great Wall is being able to look forward, sometimes with slight horror, at what you have to climb and then being able to look back at how far you’ve come. It’s a trick a fair number of action RPGs have picked up, to their credit. Anyhow on the first quarter the walk was reasonably smooth, although the stairs were often quite steep and at times no more wider than the width of my feet. The stairs within the towers tended to be particularly bad, although the view from the top was often worth it. In the end, only myself, Katie, and Mick decided to go for the whole walk and rather than heading on to the bus decided to trek all the way to the restaurant where we’d have lunch.

As a side note, in one of these pictures, I helped Mick hold a Union Jack. While I’m an Anglophile, I pledge my allegiance to the U.S. However, the guy’s crazy enough to carry it around with him and he served as a police trainer in Iraq, so I figured as an American the least I could do to show some gratitude is to help him hold his flag.

November 20, 2007

As I mentioned in my Forbidden City post, I went to Jingshan park after leaving the Forbidden City. The park is quite large and has a hill made of earth dug up to make the boat and some nearby lakes. There’s a small admittance fee and getting there also demands shooing off bicycle cart drivers. Both Bob and my guidebook strongly recommend against using them, apparently they tend to go places you don’t want to go and then renegotiate the price. When we went for Peking duck on a subsequent night, there was actually an angry group of drivers that briefly followed our taxi. Apparently the driver was treading on their turf.

Anyways, the ascent has stairs and such and isn’t that bad. However, I was feeling a bit sick and tired so I strained a bit. The view from the top is quite good and as my pictures show Beijing is defined by sprawl. The city just spreads out with both dense and low-rise sections. The city does benefit from a good subway system, so it isn’t that hard to get around, but the feel is very different from Hong Kong. There’s also a series of ring roads that reminds me of the attempt to deal with D.C. beltway congestion by just building an additional farther out beltway.

After our misadventures on the taxi ride home I enjoyed some downtime and then went with the group to an acrobatics show. I had a bit of a headache, so I’m fairly glad I didn’t try for the high pitched Beijing opera instead. Anyways the show was quite good, but I didn’t really feel comfortable taking video during it so the footage doesn’t really capture what was going on.

Anyhow, there was a group of girls who seemed to be in their teens and boys who seemed a bit younger and they were all quite good. The main point of note was that they were trying bits that clearly pushed the limits of their abilities. They sometimes didn’t quite make the jump and a half-dozen bowls were kicked up by unicycle riders but not caught on their heads. In an impressive feat of stamina, one acrobat managed to do her full range of contortions while suffering from a nosebleed. Some of the cutesy bits involved the boys who for one act had stagehands dressed as turtles and for another wore about four hats each and then passed them all around. All in all a great show.

Bit of a walk to dinner which was fairly good and had some spice. The bathroom at the place was a good deal less pleasant and made me miss the relative luxury of even cruddy American restaurant bathrooms.

November 19, 2007

The Forbidden City is actually quite the large palace complex. I’d say it has the area of a couple city blocks. The general design, courtyards broken up by large sub-palaces, is fairly repetitive although the art varies some with each section. Interesting, you can tell a building’s importance by the number of little animal guardians it has at the upper corners of the roof. If it’s eleven, than the building was used for the Emperor’s most important functions. It is neat though being able to freely wander, back when this place was in operation for a guy like me to get in I’d have to be a top scholar or artist or give up hope of children.

There’s a lot of paintings on the buildings, statuary, and carved stone. The statuary and some of the giant water buckets used for fire extinguishing were gold coated. Some of that gold was stripped off when the place was raided by European powers back during the Qing Dynasty. The most precious treasures are actually over in Taiwan, although there is a neat clock museum. I didn’t actually see what they did have in the treasure gallery, Mick said it wasn’t that great and it cost extra. And speaking of costs, there was a quite affordable resturant. I got a good lunch and drink for around twenty five yuan (~$4).

Spending only a few hours wasn’t enough to really explore the place, although if we were guided (it was just me, Rick, and Mick) we may have seen a few more highlights. The audio tour was alright but the wifi proximity sensors didn’t always seem to trigger and there was no rewind or fast forward available. Also my guidebook incorrectly promised Roger Moore. The garden at the far end was quite neat and were I to go back I’d definitely take more time to explore it. There was one neat climbing area that apparently the Emperor and a consort would go up once a year to dine at the pagoda at the top. After we left we climbed the hill in Jingshan park, which was created using the soil from the moat. Good quick hike and a nice view from the top.

November 18, 2007

After my post noting the downsides of Washington’s National Mall I’ve got to say that Tiananmen Square makes us look good by comparison. The main problem with the Square is Chairman Mao’s mausoleum which is large, ugly, and central. It’s surrounded by communist art that’s not too shabby, except for the one guy who looks like a fascist. Apparently the mausoleum might not be around forever. Mao had specifically requested that he be cremated and I’m told the building destroys the Fung Shui of the square. If you like you can wait a few hours to shuffle by what’s allegedly his corpse, but I passed on that one.

This is actually one of the few places I saw guards with guns. Most everywhere else they were unarmed. Amusingly, I saw one changing of the guard in Xi’an that included a ceremonial walky-talky handover. That said, most of the patrols didn’t have weapons even here. There wasn’t a huge presence on the mall itself although this was the first place I saw marching squads. Instead I’m told they just have a huge surge capacity available within a minute or so.

Surrounding buildings include an old school Victorian architecture station, a national museum that’s presently closed for renovations (I saw trucks driving in and out at night), the Great Hall of the People, and the entrance to the old imperial city. The portrait of Mao was certainly big, but still a bit smaller than I expected. Anyhow, for all DC’s problems, the monuments are prettier, there’s more museums, I prefer earth to stone in a square of this size, and that’s not even counting the whole police state and massacre thing (China in general doesn’t feel like a police state but Tiananmen certainly does). I think the Mall is definitely the better gathering spot of the two.

November 17, 2007

Evac from Xi’an was a bit hectic because the central train station is overwhelmed and doesn’t have room to expand. After getting through security, higher than usual for US trains but well less than US trains, we had to sit for a bit awaiting boarding. I was fairly miserable due to a cold that only then decided to hit me really hard. When our train arrived we crammed in through the ticket gate and then up and over a pedestrian bridge to our boarding platform.

Incidentally, I carried two backpacks on this trip, a big one of mostly clothes and a smaller school-sized one that had my laptop as well as clothes I couldn’t stuff into the main bag. My big bag could also function as a roller bag and I sometimes used it as such when pavement was available. I did so on this occasion.

It was a mistake, it mean that my hands were tied up and made the stairs going up to the bridge a real pain. As a result of my hands being tied up, my wallet got nicked, I suspect this happened in the crush right before the stairway. Happily, I had heard from Bob that pickpockets would be a problem in Xi’an. As a result, after getting sick of using a money belt, I transferred most everything to my passport satchel bag. Only lost a wallet, less than 100 yuan (~$15), and my Library of Congress reader ID card. I was still a bit sick for the train ride, but we had fun celebrating. Maureen’s birthday and the boxed dinner they offered was pretty good.

Regardless, the train ran a couple hours late. I actually was glad, this cost us some time in Beijing but meant we didn’t have to leave at an early hour. We caught a taxi to our hotel, or as the case may be a similar sounding hotel near by. Bizarrely even having cards with the name of the hotel and maps doesn’t seem to be enough for the taxi drivers. This actually happened again later in the day. I have an instrumental approach to taxis, if I can get within a block or two of a weird destination I try to get out immediately, my traveling companions were trying to get to the exact location, took another fifteen of lost taxi driver to convince them to go with my methods.

By comparison, I only made one or two mistakes on the subways and the signs were always excellent. The subways were actually dirt cheap here, only 2 yuan. They’re installing fare gates, you can see them up. But for now, you just pay to buy a ticket than give it to a gatekeeper. Not that efficient. James Fallows actually has a post with some of the cards that will soon be used. The new system should probably be in place for the Olympics this coming summer. Regardless, moral: subways rock!

[I added a bit more to this entry within a few minutes after first posting it.]

November 16, 2007

After having been thwarted twice by limited and even inaccurate ticket window hours, I finally made it up the Bell Tower in Xi’an as my last tourist act in the city. It was well worth it. There was a traditional performance on the inside including a massive set of chimes that had to be rung with this big wooden rod. Not surprisingly the bell pictured above was even louder and you could get three rings for a couple of bucks. Afterwards they recommended putting your hands on it, which was a lot of fun because you could feel the thing vibrate. There was also a shadow puppet exhibit on the inside and a few bush sized bonzai trees on the outside, all and all a fun place to visit.

[Trimmed bit about the departure from Xi'an so it can go with next entry and the pictures.]

And to end this particular entry on an even happier note, the ringing the chapel bell pun in the title is not entirely inaccurate. When I got back from China I proposed to my girlfriend who I suppose, much to Gene Weingarten’s dismay, I’ll now refer to as my fiance[e]. The actual pieces of jewelry I gave her I picked up in the Shaanxi museum back on Thursday[, silver and jade, I hope. Back at work my co-worker pointed out that the Dragon necklace actually fits well with the typical Chinese Dragon-Phoenix wedding theme. However, she added that the Dragon typically went with the male. Oh well, who said we went with traditional gender roles (or traditional gendered spellings of fiancee)?]

Founded in 1985, Darkon is one of America’s oldest and largest LARPs, and the showdown between two kingdoms within it, Mordom and Laconia, was captured in the documentary Darkon, a movie so mighty it needed two directors (Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer). The film has its television premiere on the IFC Channel tonight at 9 p.m., where it joins the ranks of movies like Hoop Dreams and Murderball as one of the great documentary dissections of how Americans play....

Darkon has 700 members, fielding up to 150 people at any given battle. "The documentary shows us at the height of our imperialistic pretensions," says Kenyon Wells of his country, Mordom. "We’re dominating the world and reveling a bit in being the imperialistic bad guy. We hadn’t lost a land fight, let alone a war, in 15 years." Mordom attracted the best new players, they had the deepest pockets, and they loved winning.

The movie was fantastic because the story it told was interesting. ’Good’ kingdom versus ’evil’ kingdom. House husband versus an executive. The competing leaders are both hams in different ways and a lot of fun, as are the various other participants that get interviewed. That and there’s the clash of foam sword on foam sword. What else could you want?

The DVD apparently comes out late February. I’ll buy it when that happens and have a showing. But prior to that, or for anyone that isn’t in my area, it’s probably worth checking On Demand if you have it to see if you can watch this thing.

Question to Readers: Anyone know any Darkon players? It’s MD/VA based but bizarrely while I was a fencer and knew a fair number of Society for Creative Anachronism guys I had never heard of this particular game before the movie. Go figure. Not looking to join up, I’ve got other empires I’m worried about, but I’d be interested in stories.

November 14, 2007

After heading back from the Terra Cotta Warriors, Rick and I went to visit Xi’an’s great mosque. Not surprisingly it was located within the cramped streets of the Muslim quarter. It took a bit of doing to find, navigating this area reminds me some of Quest for Glory II, large spaces can be hidden within small streets.

Regardless, the mosque itself is quite impressive with elegant gardens. If memory serves the mosque had five sperate courtyards, all in a row, with the main worship area at the far end from the main entrance. There was a worship service ongoing when I visited and side rooms were curtained off while the sound of prayers reverberated from loudspeakers. Overall it was more what I think of as a temple aestetic. A pagoda served as a minaret and so forth. That said, there were the occasional bits of Arabic, more common as I got deeper in, as well as depictions of Mecca and the like.

My timing was good and I arrived at the largest square near the main worship area as the prayers turned into a speech of some sort followed by fairly overpowering chanting. I didn’t get too close to the enclosed worship area since there were signs requesting that visitors not do so. Regardless, the site was definitely well worth the visit. By being a bit more ascetic it kept the beauty of Chinese temple design while toning things down a bit. I rather like the balance. The churches I noticed looked a bit more like western churches. Probably because Islam arrived comparatively early via the Silk Road and I don’t think Christianity made inroads until later.

November 13, 2007

I’ve started throwing in links to the photosets for past travel blog entries. I’ve done a few early ones and have linked to all the sets for Xi’an. [They’ll be in the start in brackets]

Go here to see all the albums for my China trip. I’ll throw new sets into the collection as I put more up. They are still grouped by blog entry to keep it to a manageable number of pictures at a time. I’m presently working to get it down to my 100 best photos, but that’s taking a little longer than I hoped. Check in early next week, hopefully, to see that.

The Terra-Cotta warriors are about an hour out of Xi’an and adjacent to the tomb of the Emperor of Qin. He was the first one to unify China, quite the tyrant he put his people to work constructing thousands of terra-cotta warriors and the earliest version of the Great Wall. The terra-cotta warriors were to be his army in the afterlife, which is better than having people killed in order to accompany you I suppose. After his death his dynasty fell apart and a rebel general attacked the underground chambers housing them, stole their weapons, and burned the place.

Thus, the warriors were found in pieces. Hence Doris’s comment that this was the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle. Apparently for centuries when peasants found them they figured they were parts of evil spirits and hung and smashed them like a pinata. A few decades ago, a local well digger had a better idea and reported his finding to the authorities and has been making his money selling and signing books ever since (he was there when I visited but he doesn’t like having his photo taken because of the flash).

They’ve reconstructed whole columns of the warriors, although many are still buried in part to preserve the original paint job. The picture above is of the reconstruction area, which had figures that made me think of terra-cotta zombies-- arms were missing and their mid sections often had sizable chunks gone. Still, they made for a quite impressive sight. There wasn’t as much variation of expression as there was in the figures in the Shaanxi History museum, but the warriors are still quite distinctive. They also have horses, but they’re for chariot pulling and not riding.

Sadly, the second dig site was under renovation so we skipped to the third. It was much smaller, the first is literally in an aircraft hanger, the third site could fit within the basement of a good-sized house. That said, the third site did have a slightly better view on the broken pieces of the warriors. Finally there was a museum with two half-scale bronze carriages that would apparently transport the Emperor around the afterlife. I’m not sure the way afterlife scaling works, but practically speaking it seems the more precious the material the smaller the model can be,

November 12, 2007

After hitting the Shaanxi history museum I split with the group to go on a whirlwind tour of Xi’an’s pagodas and temples. The cold I caught on the boat felt particularly terrible the next day, suggesting that for a longer trip I should probably pace myself better. Xi’an lacks a subway so my locomotion was by cab since I didn’t have a proper bus map and was in a hurry. The cabs were pretty cheap, typically between $1 to $2 US. That said, I was twice turned down by drivers who apparently thought my comparatively short hops weren’t worth their time.

The two pagodas, the Big Wild Goose and Little Wild Goose, weren’t that exciting as they were both made of brick. The Little Goose Pagoda was a bit more interesting because the top had been damaged by lightning and was still quite irregular. Obnoxiously, there were separate admission charges to enter and climb both pagodas. I only saw the Big Goose from the ground and saw the Little Goose from outside the gates due to a 50 yuan charge. (That charge apparently included a new museum, there may have been a way to avoid paying it but I didn’t see it).

My last stop to the Baxian Temple of the Eight Immortals, which unlike hte Pagodas was predominantly Taoist. However, like the Small Goose Pagoda, I didn’t get by the gates . For whatever reason, the temple proper was closed, although there was a neat set of vendors on the pedestrian street leading up to it, on the whole I was reminded of the activity around Shinto shrines in Japan. I then walked back through a poorer neighborhood. There were a fair number of school children happy to say hi and a blessed absence of vendors.

The one thing I really noted is that everything seems to get reused in China. There were guys, often in fatigue jackets, stripping the building material from demolished housing. I don’t think the fatigue guys were active military, may have been vets or it could just be a fashion statement. I also saw a kid carrying away coach stuff and later saw the coach lying on the sidewalk that it had been stripped from.

After walking back to Xi’an’s central city and noting what looked like painting day-laborers, I caught a taxi to the hotel and eventually rejoined the group. We had a great dinner to celebrate Doris’s birthday (thanks Jacob for picking up the tab) at the rather class Love Kitchen. Good food, Bob says the spice was tuned down a bit, an 8 not a 10, but it certainly hot enough for me.

November 11, 2007

After finishing our bike ride and navigating by foot Xi’an’s treacherous traffic circles, we walked through the Shuyuanmen art street to the Beilin Museum. The museum has the standard temple look but the contents are more interesting to me than the collection of pots and bronze-works. Instead, this museum held giant stone slabs with scores of characters on them. Think the ten commandments only bigger. Included among them was one etched landscape that I subsequently bought in rubbing form. I really have to say, as means of preserving your words go, carving them in stone really does the job.

Next stop was the Shaanxi History Museum. Named after the province it covered the areas history from the earliest dynasties through Xi’an’s time as the capital of China on to the final Qing dynasty. The pieces were interesting and well presented. I thought the coins with holes were particularly neat. One attendent told me that in times of inflation they were further broken up into a smaller coin with a hole and a larger ring coin. Also of interest was a giant soduko style board where each line added to 111, apparently a way of warding ghosts. Also I thought many of the figures had funny expressions.

The main thing I learned is that what I thought of as a Ming vase was really a Qing vase. The blue and white vases with highly complex patterns are probably Qing, which makes sense as they were more recent and thus had more technology available. There weren’t even any blue and white Ming pieces in the museum at all, although I did later see a couple in the Summer Palace. They were still quite pretty and reasonably complex with drawings of dragons and such. However, unless I was the only one confused by this, the popular image of Ming vases is totally wrong.b

November 10, 2007

We got up early to hit Xi’an’s city wall. The enclosed central city is 4 kilometers by 3 making the perimeter a 12 k which is just about right for a nice picture rich bike ride. The rental place was actually on the wall itself, which makes sense as who wants to take a bike up the steps? The wall is rather well maintained, although there’s a fair number of broken bricks, particularly near the end.

The gate houses were massive, each with their own courtyard. Not surprisingly, many tunnels have been added to access to the city core for modern traffic. The main cardinal roads go by the gate houses although there are also other points where traffic is allowed to pass. Along the wall there are fairly regular smaller guard houses although they aren’t at every single interval. I’m not sure if they used to be there or if they weren’t always deemed necessary. The guard houses in each of the four corners were a bit bigger, although at least one was missing.

Beyond the fun of riding on a city wall, there were some neat sights. Pagoda style buildings, particularly on rooftops, were fairly common. If you wanted to make a live-action Chinese version of Gargoyles, finding a setting wouldn’t be the hard part. Seeing one building under construction was both interesting and a bit disillusioning. The whole of the pagoda style, including the supporting beams, appears to be done using painted concrete. Oh well, still looks neat and a definite step up from the drab communist architecture of many areas.

On the outside, there’s a neat park and a still maintained moat. Lots of people doing tai chi and the occasional musical group practicing. Finally, we got to see one temple from above. The obstruction between the entrance and the first courtyard is apparently a ’spirit wall’ meant to keep evil spirits, who apparently can’t turn corners, from entering. My first flippant guest was that it was to make sure sightseers would enter and pay.

November 09, 2007

I think I’ve got a middling read on the politics. ENDA with the transgendered probably won’t pass this year and I’m guessing Rep. Frank doesn’t think he has the votes right after the ’08 election either. In the longer term, they probably can get it but that would mean putting off the protections for an indeterminate amount of time. I think it will be a bit easier to get the transgendered in once its demonstrated that ENDA for sexuality isn’t so scary, but at the same time there won’t be quite as much drive as the group to be protected will shrink substantially. So, from what I know, its basically a wash.

As for the personal part, I meant self-interest. I don’t have any skin in this particular game. Thus since I don’t see the politics clearly coming down one way or another, I defer to those with in the affected communities to work it out amongst themselves.

November 08, 2007

Arriving in Xi’an we had an hour ride from the airport. On the way we saw some mounds that held various tombs, big ones for emperors, fairly small ones for other top officials. Xi’an’s got a population of a bout 8 million and the core of the city, about 12 sq kms, is within an old city wall. It had been the capital back during the Tang dynasty and earlier and also the end of the Silk Road.

Much of the city is on a gird pattern with the cardinal directions each getting a eponymous street. The origin of the Chinese word for shopping transliterates as East-West and refers to going to the city’s East and West markets. There’s a beautiful bell tower in the city center and a large Muslim quarter adjacent to it. After hitting the Starbucks, finally getting net access (I also had a brief spell at the airport), and wandering a bit, we went as a group to the Muslim quarter. There was a neat range of shops and we had dinner at a kabob and bread place. It was quite tasty and cheap, although they definitely overdid the seasonings.

The rest of the boat trip was fairly uneventful. There was a lot of shipbuilding and bridge construction along the shore. Massive new towns have sprung up filled with those relocated by the dam. That evening there was a cabaret with alternating crew and passenger acts. Our group took a pass, most of the other groups may have been well advised to do the same, although I did like the Germans’ two songs. The crew dances tended to have bad audio but the costumes and dances themselves were rather good.

We disembarked at Chongqing, which counting surrounding areas has a population of 33 million. It had been the wartime capital during WWII because it was far more defensible Come 1997 it was granted municipality status and given special benefits and has grown rapidly since then. Our local guide pointed out that there were few bicycles because the town was so hilly. It was rainy and misty this morning, which is apparently the standard whether due to the convergence of two rivers and the surrounding mountains.

The airport was quite new and sleek. It also felt comparatively empty, even by Western standards. Near as I can tell it is mostly used by tourists and the rich. Our flight to Xi’an was full so they’re doing good business, but they’re far from capacity and aren’t presently oriented to mass-use. There was a fair amount of leg space on the plane, which was both nice and surprising. Lunch was odd, white bread sandwiches with lettuce, ham, and possibly mayo. The crusts were removed as often happens in China. Felt like a mistranslated Western meal.

November 06, 2007

Under Taoism, everyone comes to Fengdu after they die, tourists just get to come here a bit earlier. The multi-temple compound is up about 400 steps, you can also do a chair lift but Grim Fandango firmly warned me against taking shortcuts when it comes to the afterlife. The journey was doubtless once much longer, but along with the old city the original approach is now underwater. The new city is visible across the river.

There’s a lot of neat statues, temples, and legends. There’s three tests for determining if you’re a good soul. First there’s a slippery bridge to cross, bonus if you can do it in nine steps. The nine steps was actually a little tricky for me because it meant tiny steps at the end which made it harder to balance. Supposedly if you cross holding your spouses hand it means you want to be together in the next life. The next test is just crossing a high threshold without touching it.

The final one is hard and involves standing on one foot on a small round stone for three seconds. I could do it for a count of three but I’m not sure I counted slowly enough and I certainly wasn’t looking up at the characters of virtues whiles I did it. That was the one test where I intentionally eschewed using my left foot, as I was supposed to as a male. I suppose it shows that without male privilege I can’t make the grade. Alternately that I’m too held down by earthly possessions, namely my laptop bag.

Finally, on the way back you can choose the silver bridge for long life or the gold one for wealth. Long-life all the way. Initially most of the other tourists seemed to be making the same call, although I’ll note that the temple to prosperity had a lot more offering candles burning than the temple of health.

Qutang Gorge is the shorted of the gorges at only eight kilometers and is also said to be the most beautiful. I tend to disagree, that may well have been true pre-2003, but as is much of the grandeur of the gorge has been reduced in proportion with the amelioration of the danger of the travel.

Originally it was highly unsafe and only allowed one boat through at a time. One tenth of all boats going through were supposedly lost with another tenth damaged. There were signal houses to control traffic in addition to forts that were there to defend the gorge, most recently against the potential threat of further Japanese incursion. There used to be a hanging timber pathway that’s now underwater and famous writing on the wall that has been reproduced well above the water. The gorge ends in a ‘gateway’ with tall cliffs on both sides. That gateway is pictured on the back of the 10 yuan note.

The city afterwards was interesting and had a few more historical buildings including an old elevated elaborate path that would soon be at river-level. That night there were a few other shots of interest on the river and a fairly lame party in the evening that only had a single CD of dance songs.

[Sidenote, the entry was posted before accidentally appended to the Meeting the Goddess entry. No picture with the first post and I added the bit about the 10 yuan. I also backdated it to get the order right.]

After we got back to the ferry and then the boat, we were going through our second gorge. In addition to limestone formations, both these peaks and those in Shennong spring are known for their clouds. It was raining off and on in the morning, so clouds were in abundance and they stayed around for the rest of the afternoon.

The most famous of the sites in Wu Gorge is the Goddess, a standing-stone on a peak that looks over a fork in the river. On many days she’s shy and surrounded by clouds, but today, surprisingly, she was in clear view. According to legend she’d slain a dragon that had caused typhoons and then stuck around to safeguard travelers.

November 05, 2007

We switched to a smaller boat to ride up Shennong Stream. The area is known for its hanging coffins, which were put in caves in the cliff back before written history so nobody knows how they did it. They’ve almost all been taken down now and put in museums or the like, although they did recreate one. Originally the ferry we used could only have made it a short distance up the stream, but with the higher water it could go another twenty minutes.

As the gorge closed up we switched to ‘peapod’ boats, which are about the side of sampans. They had a captain in front and in back with rudders and poles. In the front there were another four oarman. We had a good pace and there were an amazing number of caves and ‘stalactites’ that were really just hanging rocks leftover when the rest of the limestone around them was eaten away.

We finally turned around at the end and saw a brief demonstration of seeing the boats hauled by ropes pulled by the four oarsman. The water high up in the stream is shallow enough that they have to portage. They’re fairly famous for having done in naked with special sandals, as they didn’t have non-chafing clothing. In our case, they just hauled to turn our boat around, which was obviously just for show but still neat. On the way back down, our guide sang a few songs of the traditional Tejid ethnic group. She was a member of it and hadn’t been good enough at math to be the child sent to high school, but had gotten support from her parents to go learn English. She was an excellent singer and I bought a recording of the traditional songs.

November 04, 2007

Bob discussed China’s
one-child policy at dinner and as little else of interest happened that evening
(I fell asleep early), I thought that may be of interest to some readers. I’d been under the mistaken impression that
it was being largely lifted, that’s not accurate, instead it’s just being
relaxed. There were already exceptions,
ethnic minorities were allowed a second child and farmers who had a girl were
similarly allowed to try again, once, for a boy. Enforcement varies, for example our guide the
next morning mentioned that she had two siblings of varying ages, perhaps by
stacking the rules for farmers and ethnic minorities.

The main form of loosening is that, to reward law-abiding
parents for their sacrifice, when two only children marry they are allowed a
second child. However, many won’t as
there are more urban Chinese and having only children is now a larger part of
the culture. For those that marry foreigners, the policy can be skirted by not
giving one of the children Chinese citizenship, but that causes a host of
complications when living on the mainland and means the government has less
responsibility to them.

The means of enforcement was originally a giving several
people, typically women, in each village responsibility for monitoring
childbearing. It sounds like it now is
done more by doctors. From menstruation
to menopause, checkups each three months can fairly easily find signs of
pregnancy. Similarly, birth control
particularly **EUDs (sp?)**, is actively pushed. Married couples are required
to seek permission before having kids. Having a child before 25, having a child when not married, or of course
having multiple children can result in shaming, loss of government job, or
fines. In more extreme cases, there have
been forced abortions or sterilizations. The old fees of several thousand yuan are becoming weak deterrents
because of inflation, but new fees are based on the child’s total cost to the
government and allow for more punitive flexibility.